Forget about January being the start of the new year! Spring is the perfect time to clear out the cobwebs and start your summer months with a clean sweep! Check out these easy and inexpensive ways to get your family organized today.
“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein
Clutter is the beast that can fell even the most productive parent. We live with, use, and need stuff. We have come to rely on the stuff that makes our lives better, easier, faster, prettier, and warmer. The price of our habitual consumerism can be that the stuff begins to own us.
You can forget about actual cleaning when there is junk crammed into every corner of your workspace, home, and your personal life. More than anything, clutter can make you feel defeat — that horrible, obnoxious, feeling that is reserved for failed grade 4 math tests, provincial driving exams, and…clutter.
The first secret to controlling clutter is: do just one thing. Do the thing that annoys you most first. The second secret is to use the time you have, and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Sometimes, 30 minutes (or roughly one nap that includes a snack and a coffee for you) is all you have. Make it count!
Here are 30 Clutter-Control Tricks that each take less than 30 minutes to complete.
I can still vividly recall the homework battles I had with my own mom—“I’ve already graduated grade five!” she would exclaim as I incessantly whined for help from the kitchen table.
Blaring televisions, exciting distractions, hard-to-locate stationery, and inadequate workspaces can quickly make the homework battles into homework wars. Kids are receiving longer homework assignments and are cultivating shorter attention-spans. It's no wonder that parents and kids alike get knots in their stomachs at the mention of the "H-word."
As adults, we are keenly aware of how our physical spaces can contribute to our own productivity. With a stack of unorganized papers on my desk, I'm rendered useless. We have all seen our dorm-mates hijack a study session, because they can't find their notebook/pen/lucky protractor. The same is even truer of our little learners, whose work habits are still solidifying.
Now that the kids are organized and back to school, it's our turn. I don't know about you, but September feels more like a new year than January does. I feel the need to get organized. Whether your home office is in the kitchen, on the couch or at the coffee shop, here are five items to make blogging more organized, in style.
We all need a little spark to ignite our organizing fires. Between dirty dishes, less than eight hours of snoozing, colds, and complaining, we can sometimes get stuck in a rut.
The piles of stuff that pool at the top and bottom of every staircase in your house — the books, toys, belts, pens, and glasses case kinda stuff that takes an army to cart up/down the stairs.
It's the stuff you find yourself falling over, and saying words like "crap" (only worse).
And, if your house is as busy as mine is, that stuff just won’t stay where I put it. Imagine that.
Keep calm — There’s a Basket for That!
The “Crap Basket.”
This basket(s) lives at the top and bottom of each staircase in our home. It prevents us from having to pile….crap (for lack of a better word) at the top and bottom of the stairs, waiting to be carried up/down in several small trips.
When you are putting your sheets away, fold them and place them inside the matching pillow case. Then everything is in one pillow case, neat and tidy!
I wish I would have figured this out years ago!
Use the plastic tabs from bread bags to label your electronic cords. You can write on them with black marker and they'll fit snugly around the cords, so you know what goes where.
Simple and easy.
We are all busy people and here are some tips to make life just a little easier:
Buy socks in bulk Purchase a bulk package of black tube socks and a bulk package of white tube socks. Time saved= no need to match socks as they are all the same and kids can grow into the socks and the socks last longer.
Transition Time Remember that you need transition time - when planning your day leave room for the unexpected.
Just like the animals of the woods, we humans should look for the lowest lying fruits to help replenish our inventory (have I taken this simile too far yet?). By now you clearly know that I am talking about foraging in your local dollar store.
Here are the top 10 things you need to stockpile from the dollar store in order to keep your house organized and your life a little less stressful.
Do you ever dream that you walk into your closet and it’s perfectly organized? Every item has its place, everything is organized by colour, every accessory has a compartment and you can find your favourite dark denim skinny jeans in a split second? No, you aren’t on an episode of Cribs sneaking a peak at your favourite celebs closet, you too can achieve this zen like state.
For puzzles that don't come in boxes or resealable packages, use freezer Ziplock bags to store and organize the pieces, the board, the picture, etc. Use a marker to write on the Ziplock the title of the puzzle and how many pieces are in the bag. This takes less space to store than puzzle boxes, for an organized play area.
Buy socks in bulk
Printer-friendly version